


this is what we are without you

by thedinokid



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedinokid/pseuds/thedinokid
Summary: Each withdrawing into their own head. Regrets, pain, and maybe hope, but mostly anger. This is what they are without him. No one tells them that they've lost their focus. They have to find it for themselves and put their broken team back together.An introspective piece for each member of this family.





	this is what we are without you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notabeautifultalentedasshole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabeautifultalentedasshole/gifts).



> Still reeling from 3x02. I'm still not okay. So I write. And I hope I got everyone down on this lil team of outlaws and misfits.

Jeremy doesn’t speak it into existence. The heavy silence hanging in the air, heads bowed down in defeat. He opens his mouth a few times, but he catches his breath, his words. Sensitivity training, Jeremy, he reminds himself.

He never liked keeping secrets. BBD had too many of them, and keeping his mouth shut had been a huge challenge, yet he never wanted this. He didn’t want to be the one, saying _I told you so_. He’s not…

Part of the family. Nicole says he’s part of their family now, but at a time like this, he’s not too sure. Well, maybe he’s still family, but like the extended one, the one with the weird gay cousin.

He wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans. He watches for any sign of movement. No one moves. It’s a frozen scene. Time stops for everyone.

Jeremy can’t stand this anymore. Time is a luxury they don’t have. Everyone’s drawn lines around themselves and quickly receded within their own little circles. He can’t reach out even though he wants to. So he escapes down into Shorty’s basement.

He doesn’t let his sacrifice go to waste. Like the vials of new drugs lined up in his case.

Jeremy studies the symbols. He works. This is what he’s good at. No, this is the only thing he can do. Before he remembers his mother, and how powerless he feels to lose another, he works.

 

//

Nicole keeps an eye out for the window. She checks. No sign of suspicious movement. All clear. She can’t take the edge off, pulsating all the way to her fingertips, even though she drinks the shared whiskey.

She glances at Waverly who can’t seem to stop pacing around even with a bad leg. Her heart aches because she knows how it is to lose somebody. It doesn’t get easier.

She calls softly for her girlfriend, but she’s too wrapped up in her own thoughts. Nicole can’t blame her, because who isn’t? Doc has been obsessively staring and playing with the tip of his knife. Jeremy is hiding in the basement. Wynonna… She’s staring at the fireplace. She watches the flames crackle. No one has said a word to each other.

Nicole wonders how it could have gone right. She had been so cocky with her rock-climbing skills, but she hadn’t been fast enough to retrieve Peacemaker. She wasn’t fast enough to…

She had been the burden of this group for so long. If this is what it means to be the survivor, then she doesn’t want it.

Anger flares in her chest. But she quells it. Someone has to be steady, has to be the one who keeps a cool head, the one who considers all the possible choices. 

She watches Waverly pacing again. Nicole thinks she can’t do this. She can be a moral compass, but she can’t stand where he once stood.

 

//

Waverly’s exhausted. Yet she can’t quite settle down. She hears Nicole call for her, but she doesn’t want to give in to that comfort. She refuses to. Because once she sits down, in the arms of the one she loves, then it will all feel too real. And she doesn’t want it to be.

Maybe if she closes her eyes and opens them once more, she’ll wake up inside a cage. Not the worst timeline to be in where he gets to live. Maybe, maybe, this is another warped universe, another spell gone wrong. What if there was a way to reverse it?

Waverly wracks her brain for anything, just _anything_ , from all the research that she’s done. She paces back and forth. It usually helps her think. But nothing comes up. Nothing.

Nothing like the day she lost Daddy. Curtis. Shorty. Willa. She’s lost too much. She can’t…

The pain from her leg shoots up throughout her body. She stops, and grabs for the nearest surface to steady herself. She catches a glimpse of Nicole reaching out for her, hands ready to keep her upright.

 _I’m fine_ , Waverly wants to say, but she’s lost her voice again so she shakes her head. Nicole nods, leaning back onto her chair.

Her knuckles turn sickly white from gripping the table. She’s shaking. Waverly replays the whole scenario in her head. If only she had ignored the pain, if only she had been faster, if only she had not be so darn _useless_ , then… then…

Hot tears roll down her cheeks. She can’t get herself to stop them. She’s not like everyone else who can just bottle it up until it tears them from the inside. She’s not strong enough. She’s not.

Someone holds her up before she collapses. Even with her eyes squeezed tight, she knows that Nicole’s got her. Is it bad that she wanted it to be someone else?

Is it bad to wish for a little, _tiny_ bit of happiness for one hot second?

She wishes.

 

//

Doc can never see the darkness again, only flames. He surmises that this is an improvement from being stricken with the fear of dark enclosed spaces. He knocks back the remaining whiskey in his glass. His finger itches.

The damn lizard had to play the hero while he, the greatest gunslinger who ever lived, was knocked out cold in the dirt. He, Doc Holliday, has never felt shame like ever before.

While he wavered in his principles, this man didn’t. It wouldn’t be wrong to compare him to Wyatt, that rascal who always upheld what was right. Doc swallows. He couldn’t accept that he will never meet Wyatt again, and the fear in his gut sinks further in as he considers that he might not see… again. He will never be able to apologize to him like he would never be able to ask for forgiveness from Wyatt.

He grips his knife by the handle, ready to throw it at a nearest target, but all he sees is a home for the broken. He slowly sets his knife back down. He watches as Nicole hushing gentle Waverly in her arms. He glances to Wynonna, the woman hadn’t said a word since they came back.

For months, he had been angry. He tried to shut everyone out. He will carry his burden until Hell takes him, but he sees that he’s needed now more than ever. And he needs them now more than ever.

Doc finally realizes that it isn’t what comes after death that determines what he does. It’s that when Death comes to take him and hellfire blazes to welcome him, he still knows that he has fought for the right side. For Wynonna. And for Alice.

 

//

Wynonna’s hollow inside. Four months have passed and she tries to fill the gaps of what could have been if not for this damn curse. Yet here she is, filling her belly with cheap whiskey. Better than having the thought of Bulshar winning again, taking her family again.

She’s empty and she doesn’t know how Bulshar carves a deeper hollowness within her, but he does. And that’s what pisses her off.

_Your team of outlaws and misfits has made you soft._

The last thing Wynonna needs is her own damn mother talking inside her head. It’s not like it was difficult for her to trust anyone besides her sister to begin with. It’s not like _being soft_ is the easiest thing to do.

They had learned it together. That it was okay to be vulnerable, to put down a few walls, to remember that people are still worth the fight, the pain.

She tries to remember the sound of his laughter. She doesn’t want to forget; that’s how rare it was. She imprints his last smile in her mind. She holds onto his last soft, reassuring touches. His voice, barely a whisper, used to tell her what she needed to hear even though it hurt.

What is she without him? Back to old Wynonna, broken, alone, and lost, she guesses.

_So Bulshar has help._

_And so do I._

Maybe she’s not really alone. Wynonna side-glances at the rest of her team. God, they’re so broken, so broken just like her.

“What do we do now, Dolls?” she mumbles.

She returns to staring at the fire, and another swig of whiskey. Then she remembers. Who they’re up against, and more importantly, who they’re fighting for. Her name resounds within her being.

Wynonna refuses to let Dolls just be another name to clink glasses to, another name she cannot speak out loud, another name engraved on stone. The wrath within her rekindles, burning brighter than ever. She clutches at her necklace and pulls it off. She’s not a damn widow, waiting, praying on her pearls for a man to come back.

Wynonna throws the necklace into the fire. And he better give it back when they meet again.


End file.
